A Kenyan air strike on a camp packed with displaced women and children killed at least three and wounded scores in southern Somalia, witnesses and an aid group said. The Kenyan army denied killing civilians and said that its strike on Sunday had taken out 10 fighters from the Islamist group Shebab, the main target of its two-week-old military operation in Somalia. Medecins Sans Frontieres said at least three were killed in the air raid on the camp with some 9,000 internally-displaced people and witnesses spoke of up to five victims following a strike residents said was conducted by a Kenyan warplane on the city of Jilib.

UN agencies and NGOs are urging the Côte d’Ivoire government to reconsider its planned shutdown of sites for displaced people in the west in a bid to force them to return home. Some 18,455 internally displaced persons (IDPs) remain in 36 sites in the west, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates, while a further 169,486 are living in Côte d’Ivoire with host families. Teams are currently out verifying the latest numbers.

More than a quarter of countries represented at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth have failed to allow basic industrial rights for workers, the ACTU said. ACTU President Ged Kearney said a survey by the Commonwealth Trade Union Group showed workers’ rights were being ignored across the Commonwealth, with the worst abuses currently occurring in Fiji and Swaziland. The CTUG, representing over 30 million workers in 50 countries, is calling on the CHOGM to suspend Swaziland for wholesale violations of democratic rights.

Three years after her husband’s disappearance, Phyllis Chamnai Kipkeyo from Mount Elgon, Kenya cannot stop thinking about him. She does not know if he is dead or alive. All she knows is that he was one of the over 300 people said to have disappeared during an insurgency in the region between 2006 and 2008. The insecurity in the area began in 2005 after the militia group, Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF), was formed to seek redress for alleged injustices that occurred during a land distribution exercise in the Chebyuk settlement area. But by 2008 the SLDF had been accused of killing several hundred people, and committing offences such as torture, rape and theft.

This month’s newsletter contains news of how, for the first time, an Israeli court has ordered the Government of Israel to grant asylum. Also in the issue are articles on resettlement in exchange for local asylum; UNHCR's incentive salary policy; human rights in Rwanda; child custody rights and UNHCR resettlement; resettlement, divorce and visitation rights and a profile of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project. The edition also includes opportunities, publications, announcements, news of petitions and resources.

Tunisian women activists accused Ennahda party of giving false promises during its election campaign and reneging on them after winning a majority in the National Constituent Council in the first election the country witnessed after the ouster of President Zine Elabidine ben Ali’s regime. Those activists were particularly concerned about recent statements by Ennahda leader Rashid Ghannouchi on making some changes to the personal status law, particularly concerning the legalization of adoption and the ban on polygamy.

The tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho is to harness the power of wind and water in a $15-billion green energy project, the biggest of its kind in Africa. The Lesotho highlands power project (LHPP) will generate 6,000 megawatts (MW) of wind power and 4,000MW of hydropower, equivalent to about 5 per cent of South Africa's electricity needs.

Trade unions in Swaziland said on Monday 31 October they had been forced to call off mass demonstrations planned for the week after the government obtained a court order blocking them. Unions had called the strike to draw attention to a three-month paralysis of the country's courts, which lawyers have been boycotting in protest at the dismissal of a top judge accused of insulting King Mswati III.

In an extraordinary move, President Michael Sata has apologised to the government of Angola for what he said was Zambia's 'treachery' through its support of the rebel Unita movement of Dr Jonas Savimbi during the Angolan civil war. The apology came as Sata received the credentials of the new Angolan ambassador last week and was the first time Zambia had admitted to its part in the Angolan civil war. Subsequently, Sata sent Zambia's first president, Kenneth Kaunda, to deliver the apology in Luanda.

Egypt has a budget deficit of nearly 10 per cent of GDP and the finance minister recently said that the country is on the brink of a liquidity crisis. Meanwhile, economic growth has slowed since the uprising, decreasing government revenues, while public sector workers around the country are striking to raise wages that have been stagnant for decades. Egypt is in a tight fiscal spot. But a group of Egyptian and international activists have a solution that would take pressure off the budget and at the same time undue the economic legacy of Hosni Mubarak’s corrupt regime. The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debt, a coalition of civil society groups and concerned individuals, are calling for a comprehensive public debt audit with the eventual aim of debt forgiveness from foreign lenders.

A proposed initiative to distribute condoms to Rwandan secondary school students has divided parents, teachers and other members of society, with some cheering the plan and others concerned that teens are not mature enough to use condoms responsibly. Local NGOs, including Health Development Initiative (HDI-Rwanda), Rwanda NGOs Forum on HIV/AIDS and Health Promotion, and Association Ihorere Munyarwanda are fronting the initiative on the grounds that young people must be protected from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies.

Trusted Society of Human Rights Alliance has said IDPs still living in camps will next week take to the streets to press the government to resettle and compensate them. The lobby’s chairman, Mr Elijah Sikona, alleged that IDPs have been turned into cash cows by some unnamed politicians who have also hatched a plot to buy their votes next year. 'We have close to 800,000 IDPs in camps and some politicians are using them as a tourist attraction to earn cash,' Mr Sikona claimed.

Numsa on Sunday cautioned against 'factional defences' by some leaders within the ANC-led tripartite alliance, at the expense of the poor. In a statement issued after its two-day national executive committee, Numsa said it was concerned with the reaction of working class formations - South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) - in relation to the ANC Youth League's economic freedom march held this week. Earlier this week, SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande urged members of the ANC Youth League not to participate 'any march that will not make a difference' in their lives.

This video on the rabble.ca website is about the moving visit of members of the Egyptian Revolution to Occupy Wall Street. It features Asmaa Mahfouz - the girl who helped spark the Egyptian Revolution through her famous youtube video, which went viral. The video clip is part of an upcoming feature documentary, 'Occupy Love'.

'Algeria will remain committed to the principle of supporting the inalienable right of Sahrawi people to self-determination,' said Kamel Rezzag-Bara, founder member of the Algerian National Committee of Solidarity with the Sahrawi People (CNASPS). 'Algeria will continue to supporting the fundamental right of the Saharawi people to self-determination through free, just and fair referendum,' Mr. Bara told Algeria Press Agency (APS) on the sidelines of the 2nd international conference on the peoples’ right to resistance: case of the Saharawi .

The United States said on Monday 31 October it had stopped funding Unesco, the United Nations' cultural agency, following its vote to grant the Palestinians full membership. US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters the US had no choice but to halt funding because of longstanding US law, saying Washington would not make a planned $60-million transfer that was due in November. The United States provides about 22 per cent of Unesco's funding.

The 18-year-old Angolan youth who faces deportation despite having lived in the Netherlands since 2003, has made an emotional appeal to MPs to be allowed to stay. MPs will vote on whether Mauro Manuel, who has lived with the same foster family in Limburg since arriving as an unaccompanied refugee aged 10, can stay. The Christian Democratic party, which first supported Mauro and later changed its mind following pressure from immigration minister Gerd Leers, holds the key to his future.

Kenya has received the support of Rwanda and South Africa for its action in Somalia during separate meetings here between President Mwai Kibaki and Presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Jacob Zuma of South Africa. The three leaders, who met in Perth, were in the capital of Western Australia to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) held from Friday to Sunday. President Kibaki briefed his two fellow African leaders on the security situation in war-torn Somalia. President Kibaki also appraised the two leaders on the joint military operation that Kenya and the Transition Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia were undertaking to neutralize the insurgents of the Al-Shaabab militia inside Somalia.

Police authorities at the Leopold Sedar Senghor airport in Dakar have confirmed that they were preventing the secretary-general of the International Federation of Human Rights from entering the country. A statement issued by the rights group quoted the airport police as saying that Mr Paul Nsapu had been detained since Thursday. Since the beginning of the Arab upheavals, civil society and rights groups in Senegal have been facing difficult times with the regime of President Abdoulaye Wade over his bid for a controversial third mandate. Several rights activists have been beaten up, arrested and briefly detained during a string of public demonstrations that left scores injured and public and private property destroyed.

Women make up just 12 per cent of the roughly 18,000 candidates who will stand for election to parliament in the Democratic Republic of Congo's 28 November elections. According to the Permanent Framework for Dialogue for Congolese Women, a gender equality pressure group, only 42, or 8.4 per cent, of the 500 members of the current National Assembly – the lower house of parliament – are women.